When taking on intimate topics like sexuality, trauma, or mental health, the lines between meta function and exploitation are arguably thin. So thin that it’s easy to tread into romanticized renditions of pain with one misstep. Rita Baghdadi’s new documentary, Sirens, constantly seesaws between those lines while introducing us to the world of Slave to Sirens — Lebanon’s first all-female metal band.
Fresh off its Sundance premiere, Sirens follows the band’s founders, Shery Bechara and Lilas Mayassi, through a deeply personal slice of life. The film isn’t so much a rock documentary as it is a story of existing in an outcast alt-scene in a city where political catastrophe constantly eclipses any chance of making a life for yourself. And its reception is doubly doused in similar identity politics.
As a young Lebanese girl that lived those pivotal years the documentary captures, Sirens is a multi-faceted watch, equally filled with melancholic nostalgia and disappointment at its dips into exploitative territory. But as a foreigner, the film promises to intimately introduce you to a youth experience you probably know nothing about.
First off, Sirens isn’t a rock documentary.
Right off the bat, if you’re looking for concert clips and training montages, be warned that Sirens isn’t about that. It’s about a young group of predominantly queer women navigating both a hostile music scene and country. While the documentary does feature tidbits of the band in action — namely through writing sessions and live performance clips— its main purpose is to unravel all the gendered dynamics that plague the girls’ success, both professionally and personally.
A large chunk of Sirens’ storytelling rests in its exposition of what being a queer woman in Lebanon is like. From hiding girlfriends to going through a step-by-step script of how said girlfriends should act if parents are ever around, Sirens captures an all-too-familiar experience of navigating your sexuality in an environment that vehemently denies it — an environment where queerness is still punishable by law.
On the other hand, Sirens also takes on Lebanon’s turbulent political climate and pin-drops audiences into scenes from the country’s 2019 revolution — an incredibly necessary, and largely successful, inclusion thanks to personalized portrayals over sensationalized storytelling. Baghdadi smartly takes a colossal political moment and reins it in, focusing on the five women experiencing their city turning inside out — and still trying to make music despite the upheaval.
At its core, Sirens wants you to know just how much extraneous pressure these girls are facing at all ends, and bullseyes its target from start to finish.
Things you learn, things you don’t, and a smidge of trauma exploits…
While Sirens is ultimately a greeting, a poignant hello to Lebanon’s youth and what they’ve been through in the past few years, some crucial context within the documentary may be missed.
The film makes the rash assumption that all its viewers are familiar with Lebanon’s timeline from 2019 to 2020 — a double-edged decision that ultimately fails, as it forced the film’s nuance into hiding. Little details, like news broadcasts playing in the background, added significant weight to several scenes throughout. But there were little to no efforts to contextualize them for an international audience (which has so far made up the majority of Sirens’ viewers).
One particular detail I think was incredibly important, but that will probably go unnoticed, was the documentary’s decision to include tidbits from a national frenzy that involved the banning of Mashrou’ Leila, arguably the most famous Lebanese music group of the past decade, from performing in the country because of its openly gay members. While the documentary gave just enough detail to get across an overall message on national oppression, it didn’t adequately translate the intense weight Mashrou’ Leila’s banning had on Lebanon’s youth and queer community.
We make sense of things and who we are through movies, and Sirens’ greatest success is bringing that right to your face and forcing you to confront it.
I remember that day so clearly and how hard the blow hit me and all of my friends. It was a direct slap in the face of everything we thought we were finally progressing towards. Plus, the ban was relatively shocking considering the group’s mainstream success in both the region and abroad. Mashrou’ Leila’s banning was a clear embodiment of all the stakes at play: even a widely famous group wasn’t invincible to the daggers of homophobia. And choosing to introduce it, but then abruptly cutting its section short, was a missed opportunity to breathe more urgency into the girls’ literal, identical situation, which unfortunately, anecdotes alone can’t do.
Regrettably, Sirens also includes a scene from the Beirut blast that’s largely insensitive; namely, through an editing decision that cut to the blast out of nowhere, played it in excruciatingly slow motion, and then faded out with metal music playing in the background. The entire scene is one giant jump-scare for anyone who has experienced the blast. The documentary’s decision to drown itself in trauma exploitation at that moment was a crude, overshadowing misstep in otherwise well-balanced storytelling.
Sirens hits home.
All that being said, watching a youth I once was a part of, and all the events that drove me out of it, was in many ways a visceral catharsis. Baghdadi welded a looking glass into my own life, and confronted me with intimate memories that I never thought I’d see in a theater in New York, miles and miles away from home.
Hearing Lilas namedrop a gay club my friends and I used to go to. Seeing bits and pieces of takeout food from restaurants I have a go-to order in. Watching a mother-daughter relationship that reminded me all too much of my own — these were all pieces of home I never thought had a place in movies.
Admittedly, a large part of why I enjoyed Sirens was that sheer subjectivity. We often talk about how “representation matters,” but we often forget just how much it rings true until we’ve experienced it ourselves. We make sense of things and who we are through movies, and Sirens’ greatest success is bringing that right to your face and forcing you to confront it. While the film is wholeheartedly Lebanese, the specificity of its subject matter doesn’t eclipse the universality of its heart.
It’s a film about sisterhood. Loving your best friend. Figuring things out with your mom. Trying to make sense of a changing you. And wrapping yourself up in the hope that it’ll all get better. But above all, Sirens is a profound tribute to movies and all the ways they can take you home, and back again.
Sirens is now playing in select theaters across the country.
